Bill Gates Regrets CTRL-Alt-Delete, Wishes He Could Change It

The CTR-Alt-Delete combination is basically the shortest way for people to reboot their computers when using Windows PCs. However, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently revealed that he regrets the existence of such a complicated combination of keys. He would have liked to instead assign the task to just one key, which would have made things much easier for users.

Gates made the pronouncement during the Bloomberg Global Business Forum, which was held in Manhattan on Wednesday. At the time, the Microsoft founder said that he wishes that he could go back and just make the reboot sequence a one-key solution, Quartz reports.

“Clearly, the people involved should have put another key on to make that work,” Gates said before adding, “You can’t go back and change the small things in your life without putting the other things at risk.”

This is not the first time that the billionaire brought up the matter of the reboot keys. Back in 2013, Gates expressed the same sentiments during a fundraiser at Harvard University. It would seem that this is one of the aspects that the founder is in sync with his consumers with since a lot of people who use computers also think that it’s a hassle to have to push and hold three buttons to reboot a computer.

Then again, there is a reason why the engineer that’s responsible for the key combinations, David Bradley chose to stick with it. Apparently, during the course of the development of the IBM PC, rebooting the unit was a constant problem that the programmers had to face. Bradley had to come up with a way to make the process more convenient.

On the other hand, he also had to make sure that it wouldn’t be done accidentally, Inverse reports. A single key that would reboot the computer would have made it incredibly easy to unintentionally restart the device and potentially erasing hours of work.